Buena Vista Lagoon restoration outlined

New round of environmental studies about to begin

The Buena Vista Lagoon lies on the borders of Carlsbad and Oceanside. Plant growth and other environmental factors could over time turn the body into more of swamp. SANDAG recently decided it would lead preservation efforts. Peggy Peattie • U-T

The Buena Vista Lagoon lies on the borders of Carlsbad and Oceanside. Plant growth and other environmental factors could over time turn the body into more of swamp. SANDAG recently decided it would lead preservation efforts. Peggy Peattie • U-T

CARLSBAD  Everybody seems to agree that something needs to be done about the Buena Vista Lagoon.

Cut off from the ocean for decades by a natural sand berm and a man-made weir, like a low dam near the beach, the lagoon at the Oceanside-Carlsbad border is the only one in San Diego County that contains fresh water.

Only the water isn’t so fresh. The lagoon is slowly filling with sediment and nutrients that restrict its circulation and threaten its long-term health. If left unchecked, the basin would eventually become a meadow.

Dozens of people turned out at a public forum Thursday evening to learn more about the proposed Buena Vista Lagoon Enhancement Project and offer their comments on it.

“We’ve got to do something,” said Scott Sterling, a Buena Vista Lagoon Foundation member wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “Any restoration is a good restoration.”

Sterling, like many at the meeting, said the lagoon’s restoration is a complicated issue and it may be difficult to get people to agree on the best way to do it.

The San Diego Association of Governments, a regional planning agency, hosted Thursday’s meeting to discuss its efforts to prepare an environmental impact report on the lagoon project.

SANDAG has outlined four alternatives for the project. One is to do nothing and allow the lagoon to fill with sediment. The other three — which all involve dredging and excavating the lagoon — would be to maintain it as a freshwater lagoon; remove the barriers and allow it to become a saltwater lagoon; or create a barrier across half of the lagoon and make it part fresh and part saltwater.

The environmental report will evaluate the advantages, disadvantages and costs of each alternative and recommend one of them. The final decision will be up to the SANDAG board of directors.

People at Thursday’s meeting had various reasons for their interest in the lagoon.

“There’s a lot of mosquitoes,” said Joel Hirschkoff, a San Marcos resident who said he’s thinking about buying a home near the lagoon. “I’d just like to get rid of the mosquitoes.”

“I’ve heard a lot of new viewpoints,” said Keith Greer, SANDAG’s senior regional environmental planner in charge of the project.

All the issues and concerns people raise will be looked at as part of the environmental review, he said.

“We just want what’s best for the lagoon,” said Regg Antle, a retired physician and president of the Buena Vista Lagoon Foundation.

“Whatever is decided, we’ll back them,” Antle said. “It’s really important that we get together and do something.”

This is not the first time someone has studied ways to improve the lagoon. Members of the nonprofit lagoon foundation have been looking for solutions since the group formed in 1982.

The California Department of Fish and Game, which this year changed its name to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, led a feasibility study that started about 2002 and continued off and on until the study stopped completely in 2010, said Dave Cannon, an engineering consultant who worked on part of the study.

“A few years ago we had a saltwater alternative that was close to finished,” said Cannon, who is also working on SANDAG’s environmental review.

State officials announced in 2011 that work on the project had stopped completely because what they described as a lack of cooperation from a handful of beachfront property owners.

The property owners control the weir, and they disagreed with the state’s proposal to remove the weir and return the lagoon to its saltwater origins. Environmentalists and state biologists said at the time a saltwater lagoon would be the most natural alternative and have the greatest benefit for native species of fish, birds and plants.

However the property owners opposed that plan, which they said would leave broad, smelly mud flats exposed at low tide and put their homes at risk.

The decision to halt the project was especially disappointing to people favoring restoration because transportation money related to Interstate 5 and railroad improvements had recently become available for lagoon restoration.

Comments on the current lagoon proposal and its various alternatives will be accepted through May 25, SANDAG officials said.

Technical studies will continue through this year and into the spring of 2014. A draft report should be completed in the fall of 2014, and a final report with a recommendation is scheduled to be presented to the SANDAG board in the winter of 2015.